ABSTRACT
This chapter explores case laws based on offenses against persons. The cases include the Gary Tison brothers who implemented a plan to break their father out of prison. In the course of the escape, the convicts killed four people. Gary Tison was sentenced to life imprisonment as the result of a prison escape during the course of which he had killed a guard. A critical facet of the individualized determination of culpability required in capital cases is the mental state with which the defendant commits the crime. The chapter also includes the case in which the Supreme Court considers a Virginia statute that criminalized cross-burning when it was meant to intimidate a person or group of persons. The challenge to the law was that it violated the First Amendment. As the history of cross burning indicates, a burning cross is not always intended to intimidate. Rather, sometimes the cross burning is a statement of ideology, a symbol of group solidarity.
